I can sympathize with your experience, Ed. My experience as a Catholic was different, and I'm not sure why. I spent eight years in a seminary in Milwaukee, studying to become a priest. I left because I wanted to get married.

Yeah, I remember some people teaching "only Roman Catholics could go to heaven" - and I thought it was a delicious irony when the Catholic Church excommunicated Archbishop Lefebvre, who taught just that.

I suppose I encountered a fair number of Catholic priests and nuns who were less-than-admirable people - but to me, they were just bad people, and not representative of the Catholic Church. And I'm not sure what causes the different perspective. It seemed to me that the good people were representative of the Church, and the bad ones were just bastards.

-Joe-